In the past month my comment spam has increased exponentially, which makes it harder for me to go in and rescue the occasional comment from an actual human being that WordPress has, for reasons known only to it, decided are sufficiently spam-like to punt into the spam queue. So: If you tried to post a comment and it doesn’t show up automatically, if after a day (24 hours) it does not appear:

1. It probably went to the spam queue and was deleted (sorry);

2. If you feel like it try to repost it and if it doesn’t work, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to go in and retrieve it.

Note that most of the comments that don’t immediately show up go into the moderation queue; I get an e-mail about those and try to free them as quickly as possible. But once in a while, off to the spam queue they go. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. The ways of the WordPress spam filter are mysterious (although, to be fair, in general is does an excellent job).

Anyway, as always, please note that unless I have specifically told you otherwise, if your comment does not show up after you post it, it’s due to automatic filtering and not me hunching over the comment thread, moderating you ahead of time. Honestly, I don’t have the time for that. So in almost every case, if your post doesn’t show up immediately, don’t get paranoid. It is almost certainly not personal.

However, you don’t want to come because I am attending. I’m just some schmoe. You want to come because Pat Rothfuss is the Guest of Honor, Jim Hines is the toastmaster, and Peter Brett, Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie and Robin Hobb are the Subterranean Press guests. I mean, holy crap, that’s a lot of awesome fantasy writer-ness right there, I gotta tell you. Plus these other awesome writers. Seriously, people, if you like authors — I mean really like authors — I don’t know why the hell you’re not already signed up for this convention. Unless you are. In which case, good job.

It’s early January, which means that it’s time for people to start thinking about what they might want to nominate for various literary awards. You might be one of those people! And if you are: Hello, sexy. Let me make you aware of the writings I have writinated with my writinosity over the last the year, for you to considerate upon. Here what I have for you to consider for the 2012 nomination season:

* On the subject of Fuzzy Nation, allow me to recommend Kekai Kotaki for whatever Best Professional Artist nominations you might make. He did a fine, fine job on the cover.

* As a matter of trivia, were Fuzzy Nation to get a Best Novel Hugo nomination, it would become the first Hugo-nominated book to be a “reboot” of a Hugo-nominated book, in this case, H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, which was nominated for a Hugo in 1963. I’m not gonna lie: I think that would be cool.

* I’m also not gonna lie when I note to you that I think that even though it was written as an April Fool’s prank, “Shadow War of the Night Dragons” deserves some serious consideration for short story. One, in itself it’s a pretty amusing piece, which is never bad. Two, as a piece tailor-made to do a specific thing (i.e., pose as writing that could be legitimately seen as a “prologue” to a non-existent larger work while still being a largely self-contained short story), there’s a lot of interesting structural stuff going on. Three, it’s farce, which I assure you is not as easy as it looks. Four, it has a 153-word first sentence that uses various constructions of the word “black” eleven times, and I’m pretty sure that’s a first in all of science fiction and fantasy, and damn, am I ever proud of it.

So, for serious: “Shadow War of the Night Dragons”: Not a bad piece of story craft. Give it some thought, please.

And that’s my award pimping for the year.

Other authors: Last year I opened up a thread for all y’all to pimp your own stuff, and it seemed to go over well, so I’ll do it again this year too. Probably tomorrow or Thursday.